Typically, my mother’s day includes a nice morning of cards, hugs and school made projects and then the next 12 hours of me reminding my kids that my real present is a whole day of no arguments. I guess this mother’s day was like the rest, but with some extra excitement.

First, our transformer arrived! Seeing the heavy and super intense machine that we will be using to plug in our stand mixer, bread maker and miscellaneous 110V appliances was another reminder that our aliyah is coming super soon.

Next, we carved out time to visit a family that is moving with us to Ramot. They have a daughter that will be in the same class as one of ours. It is important to us that each of our kids know someone that will be moving with us. We feel that it will assist with transition for them to have a familiar face on the first day of school. Bonus for us to have friends when we move as well! We all had a great time discussing plans, commiserating over the stress of moving, and forming new friendships.

Finally, we went to three furniture stores on a hunt for a manual reclining, leather (or leather substitute) couch and loveseat set that were not too bulky. I know it existed 7 years ago when we bought our current couches, but we wanted to ship new ones to last even longer. It turns out that many stores are switching their couches to power reclining and are slowly phasing out the manual option. After a lot of searching, I think we found one that will suit our needs.

As I reflect on how nice and busy our mother’s day was this year, I feel a tinge of guilt. Yom Yerushalayim passed us by. With all the craziness of our aliyah plans, ironically we forgot to stop and celebrate yom yerushalayim.

In America, we have to make an effort to celebrate. We have to check the calendar and make special arrangements to mark the day. Next year, IYH it will be impossible to forget. We will feel it when we walk the streets. Our kids will understand how special it is for us to be able to go to the kotel and live in a city full of kedusha. Next Yom Yerushalayim we will be celebrating that we are living in Yerushalayim. For so many years Jewish people yearned to daven at the kotel and we will be able to go whenever we want. We will IYH be a short drive from the holiest place on earth!